All schools shut down in a Virginia county over Islam homework assignment

WEB DESK: After a teacher at a Virginia school handed out a standard homework assignment on Islam, such an angry backlash flooded that it prompted officials to close every single school in the county as a safety precaution, CNN reported.

“While there has been no specific threat of harm to students, schools and school offices will be closed Friday, December 18, 2015,” Augusta County Schools said. Extracurricular activities were shut down Thursday afternoon.

And social media exploded over the school lesson — a simple drawing assignment — into a scathing discussion about religion and education.

The county school system reacted. The assignment concerned the respective parents of the students as an attempt to convert Christian students into Muslims.

Damn shame. School should have never been cancelled. There is nothing wrong with learning something about other cultures.

It removed the ‘shahada’ from world religion instruction. “A different, non-religious sample of Arabic calligraphy will be used in the future,” it said.

And it issued a statement saying no one was trying to convert anyone to any religion.

“Neither of these lessons, nor any other lessons in the world geography course, are an attempt at indoctrination to Islam or any other religion or a request for students to renounce their own faith or profess any belief,” Augusta County schools official Eric Bond said in a statement to CNN affiliate WHSV.

Whereas the incident irked fear in school administration about the security of the schools ultimately making them look all secondary doors except for front gate.

On Monday, Augusta County issued a letter reassuring parents that schools in the county were safe. It did not reference the homework assignment but did say that parents had become worried about security